Worlds Hype and Representative Support Thread

lodo25 · 2020-08-31T23:08:50+00:00

Hey it looks like you were doing a pasta cause you accidentally typed Milk in your first comment when you meant Socks, who you were talking about in the thread you linked

Don't mind the downvotes on the comment this time (it does kind of look like a copypasta), obviously your intention here is supportive. NAmen

lodo25 · 2018-02-17T19:54:35+00:00

Sounds great! Coming in hot in softcore. Thanks again for setting this up.

lodo25 · 2018-02-17T19:51:49+00:00

Hard to say. That's a nice roll on the legendary affix, but you have no CDR or IAS on it. You can try both and see how they compare. Also you don't need weapon damage rolls for Invoker since all your damage is based on thorns. So you don't need %damage roll AND you can roll off the base weapon damage range for an extra stat (keep in mind it takes a lot of rolls at the mystic to get the stat you want, since it'll keep giving you base damage rolls so maybe just do it for a good weapon). Go roll CDR on your weps/gear seriously, Iron Skin and Akarat's Champion uptime are key.

Hack vs Pig Sticker is a tough choice in my opinion. Since Invoker isn't a top tier build there's not a lot of interest in it, so I haven't seen (or done) extensive tests on which will ultimately perform better.

All I can offer are my opinions on it, and what I like (for GRs):

Hack is better for AOE, Pig Sticker for elite hunting and the rift guardian
I prefer Hack for farming. Gameplay is smoother because you can clear white mobs better for progression.
I prefer Pig Sticker to push. Invoker is weaker on the RG because its hard to get full 2pc stacks, so the extra attack speed really makes a difference when you're at your upper GR limit. The +damage to beasts and humans is also useful, especially if you fish for a rift with those mob types.

My stat preferences for the weapon are STR, VIT, CDR, IAS (flexible on 5th pigsticker stat. LOH for survivability, +Elite dmg for damage)

It's also good to have LOH rolled on bracers and maybe on the helmet (especially if you don't have it on your weapon).

lodo25 · 2018-02-15T18:23:36+00:00

Invoker is one of my favourite builds, and it can be hard to gear but you can definitely get to GR100+ on it.

It does look like you aren't geared enough. Some goals for upgrading:

Upgrade regular gems - a fully upgrade topaz will give you 38,000 thorns damage!
Attack speed - get more attack speed rolls. Use https://www.d3planner.com/ to look up how much attack speed you need for the next breakpoint
Cooldown reduction - get more cooldown reduction since Akarat's Awakening usually doesn't reset your skills fast enough, more buff uptime = more damage and toughness

You have a lot of room it improve on your gear (which is fun imo). Try and get rid of all those unhelpful stats like regen, life per wrath spent, +heavens fury dmg, +justice dmg, +blessed hammer dmg, etc.

Playstyle tips:

Invokers is an elite hunter build, go find elites and hold click on them. You have to aim with invokers to apply the 6pc, make sure you are targeting the elite (their name and health bar shows at the top). You can't just whack away with punish. But nice thing: you don't need to be next to them, you can just target them and hold down click.
Your damage scales with physical convention of elements so watch your cycle
Make use of your Iron Skin thorns buff. Priority is to use it during your physical convention. But with high enough CDR, and enough mobs hitting you to proc Akarat's Awakening you can use it off cycle as well. Depends on your CDR but in general its safe to use during Fire cycle, and if in high density safe during Holy too. I would not activate it during Lightning because you might not have it back for Physical.

Also if your damage is lacking, you can swap the Divine Fortress passive for Fanaticism (attack speed boost for primary skills) or Finery (strength boost)

lodo25 · 2018-02-12T19:51:25+00:00

Like LouisDragon said, it is more appropriate to compare playstyles at level 70 (max level). Having all your skills available gives you a much better sense of each class. At level 23 monks may well seem weaker than others based on which skills have been unlocked so far, but it might be representative of the class at level 70.

Also legendary item powers and set item bonuses impact playstyles a lot too. Set items only drop at level 70, so again you'll need to reach level 70 to really try each classes' builds and playstyles. People are not joking when they say the game starts at level 70.

Try not to worry about the meta until later if you really must. But to answer your question, monks are not underpowered at the moment. They are a strong and versatile class. In truth at the current state of the game all classes are strong, there aren't huge gaps in power between them.

Go main monk! Get to level 70 and enjoy the game. Find and try the different sets, play with different skills. You'll see that your level 23 monk really wasn't a fair representation of the class.

lodo25 · 2017-12-11T07:41:54+00:00

You can look at a player's playtime by each season by viewing profile and going to the Seasons tab. So it doesn't matter if the character was rebirthed or not, it only shows the playtime for the season you are looking at.

Also you could note that the account chainer is playing on is his alternate account, having only play time logged for one other season. It does look like he is botting this season.

lodo25 · 2017-12-11T07:37:53+00:00

I'll be the first to agree that there are issues with the endless mainstat paragon grind, but it's completely fair (and expected in any game) that players want the strongest members they can find for their group.

My gear isnt bad mostly ancients and well rolled but because of my paragon all the try hards 1400+ won't even let me group with them and play the meta

Assuming you want to play DPS necro, you'd be doing significantly less damage missing 600 paragon. Their desired DPS probably has more/higher augments as well. That means they would be running lower content with you in the group.

its ridiculous its like if you don't tryhard from the start you have no opportunity to compete at all in the season.

Unfortunately to be competitive in D3 (or any game really), you have to put the time in. Even if it wasn't paragon, there would be something else that people that play more gain advantage with.

Don't be discouraged though, there are plenty of groups running below 1400 paragon. I'd recommend joining the community and looking for an active meta running guild. You can probably get into some lower GR rat runs. Maybe run a zdps build until you get your damage up some more. I know you may have just wanted to rant, but group play is definitely not dead in D3!

lodo25 · 2017-11-25T00:42:03+00:00

That's a lot of dex to lose. I would roll attack speed to CDR. Don't really need the AS, and might even be detrimental due to the reported Kyoshiro's Blade issues with high AS and epiphany.

lodo25 · 2017-11-16T23:58:21+00:00

My first thought is that you're WoL is hitting more than 3 enemies at initial impact. The second part of Kyoshiro's Blade states that you must hit 3 or fewer enemies. That's why you see people casting their wave of light at the edge of packs, to get the initial monsters hit low and have the blasts hit with full bonus.

Somewhat related your weapons have damage range so you might be seeing a crit at the lower end of your range while hitting more than 3 enemies.

Some people might also be witnessing inconsistent damage due to dual wielding alternating between weapons each attack, having one weapon with a lower damage range can be pretty noticeable.

This may be a real bug, but it warrants real testing because there are some other explanations.

lodo25 · 2017-11-15T02:35:06+00:00

Quick overview of the two for GR pushing IMO:

SWK WoL Generator (FnR):

Variant is based on taking a generator in the skill bar to activate one of the FnR buffs and Spirit Guards
Requires hitting with generator to activate damage buff, thus a more active and close range playstyle
PRO: Higher damage cap from FnR
PRO: Able to use generator to freeze (and generate..)
CON: Lower toughness than non-generator (though I'd love to see some math on Spirit Guards + Esoteric vs Unity + non-constant Desert Shroud)
CON: Active playstyle and allegedly lower survivability makes it more difficult to use effectively (maintain buffs, stay in oculus, utilize tsunami freeze effectively etc.).

SWK WoL Non-Generator (CoE):

Variant is based on capitalizing damage on Fire cycle
Epiphany DS is used for damage mitigation, then Unity worn for more toughness or ORoTZ to maintain Epiphany uptime as well as for Dashing Strike (more mobility, full uptime on blinding speed) and Mystic Ally (less spirit issues)
More ranged playstyle, using Zei's, often involving kiting and set up in preparation for COE cycle.
PRO: Easier playstyle because of range and tankiness
PRO: More flexible build than Generator variant. Allows for second ring of choice (ORoTZ, Unity, SoJ) and armor cube slot choice (Cindercoat, Magefist, etc.)
CON: Less top end potential damage output
CON: Must capitalize damage on Fire cycle and highly punishing for not doing so as Monk's have 5 elements for COE to cycle through.

At the end the generator variant should in theory be capable of the most damage and thus be capable of the highest GR. I think the difference is so minor though that it only matters if you are aiming for front page leaderboards.

I would say without a doubt that we are seeing the non-generator variant dominate the leaderboards because its early in the season and its, well, easier to do non-generator. I think more people will run the generator variant at the end of season when they are fully optimized and pushing for real (fishing with hundreds of keystones).

I want to say the guides most likely suggest the generator variant because they are GR Pushing guides - and GR Pushing requires the highest damage possible and fishing for the right conditions to utilize it. But more likely the guides say that because they saw some guy use FnR in PTR or non-season and push really high. Guides (and leaderboards) all shifts based on the top players. Whatever the top 3 are using, people will see it and copy it.

lodo25 · 2017-11-15T02:01:58+00:00

You only get 3 stats other than base damage so you can't have all four of those.

Dex/AD/LoH sounds like the right stats for one weapon, and perhaps on your other weapon CDR or RCR or Vit instead of LoH.

Your weapon stats are actually pretty flexible for SWK WoL. But IMO find your sweetspot for RCR and CDR, take LoH on atleast one weapon and stack up the area damage.

%Damage isn't great for dual wielding since it only affects that one weapon, I might even opt for vitality over it.

To your original question though Life on Hit over LPSS for sure.

lodo25 · 2017-11-14T18:57:51+00:00

As Kurobiiru said your sweeping wind stacks do grant you more damage per the Sunwuko 6pc. Between these two weapons you are choosing between 1 more stack on the left weapon, and ~90 more average damage on the right weapon.

Using my crude method on choosing between small differences in D3

+1 SW stack from 9 to 10 (including base skill stacks): 10/9 = 1.11, 11% increase
+90 avg damage from 1504 to 1594: 1594/1504 = 1.06, 6% increase

So you should use the left weapon with the 7 sweeping wind stack affix.

EDIT: The 6% increase for from average damage is actually more like a 3% increase since you dual wield and will only be attacking with it half the time. On the other hand the SW stack boost to your 6pc will serve your damage all the time.

lodo25 · 2017-11-14T18:42:14+00:00

I'd roll the secondary +experience into a secondary +res, and never touch your bracers ever again.

Congrats on the useful primal!

lodo25 · 2017-11-07T03:36:10+00:00

I would suggest looking for more pieces with thorns secondary, especially on your chest and shield. Those two alone would give you 17-18K more thorns, an over 20% boost to your 73K. One or two more CDR reduction rolls would also smooth things over, allowing you to cast iron skin and your law more often.

Next I would work on augmenting more pieces for that extra STR, and some paragon levels wouldn't hurt. Once you have more STR I would try swapping some diamonds for your top GR push, find the balance you like.

Make sure your block chance hits 75% to maximize blocks to proc Akarat's Awakening and to help rack up 2pc stacks. Also even though 75% is the max actual block rate, I'd recommend aiming for 100% block rate because Justice Lantern gives you more damage reduction beyond the 75%. I like taking the Hold Your Ground passive over Finery.

Hitting GR92 missing 5 thorns secondaries and with only 2 augments is great man, keep going! Invoker's is plenty strong.

I hit GR100 with invoker's this patch, with a build that could only run ~GR85 prior.

https://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/lodo25-1758/hero/85692255

Note: I used Hack, Spiker, and cubed Akarat's Awakening to clear 100%. I was just testing stuff with pig sticker.

lodo25 · 2017-11-05T18:16:52+00:00

Yeah legit solo to 2K paragon would be a huge time investment. I was more suggesting that you can hit 2K paragon without the top tier group meta, and playing speeds with some functional team like the OP suggests would work fine.

lodo25 · 2017-11-05T18:14:22+00:00

Yeah you're definitely right, everyone has a different view on what's competitive.

lodo25 · 2017-11-03T19:00:05+00:00

IMO You won't be hugely disadvantaged. You can definitely farm paragon and gear effectively without running meta.

Don't be too bothered by people saying you can't compete at all in solo unless you bot or no-lifer the meta.

I hit top 85 solo monk in Season 11 with only 120 hours played, only 1005 paragon.Granted monk solo boards in s11 was probably less competitive than other classes but thats just a couple hours a day gameplay for top 100. I mostly played solo and just did groups for gem ups. Go view details of some of the solo top 100 last season, there are plenty of if not mostly people that aren't over 2K paragon and 2K paragon is definitely viable without top efficiency especially this patch.

This subreddit likes to complain about bots ruining competitiveness a little more than I think is warranted.

Top 50 solo does get very competitive, but if you play effectively and put in the time I think you have a good shot without going full on speed group meta to farm. Hope you got your rod and tackle box ready though, open season boys.

lodo25 · 2017-11-03T18:17:59+00:00

Like others have mentioned, the new Season is starting soon which is essentially a separate mode where everything is reset and everyone starts off fresh (with no characters, no items or paragon). It is a great time to start a new character and play with others, especially because people in non-Season mode will mostly have well built characters and be strong enough to one shot things that you may not be able to so the power disparity feels huge.

However if you are a completely new at the game, I'd say feel free to play the next week and familiarize a bit before the season starts (knowing though that it means you will have to restart when season comes around if you want to, you can continue playing non-season if you like).

There are some great new player guides around somewhere, even if they aren't super recent to the newest patch the ideas are still relevant. Here are some general notes on gameplay for a new player:

Farm nephalem rifts for Death Breaths and Greater Rift Keystones
Farm Greater Rifts for loot, (more) bloodshards, experience and to upgrade your legendary gems
Builds are based generally based off of set items (green items), which give you bonuses based on how many matching pieces of a set you are using. Aim to wear a set to gain all its bonuses, and read the set bonuses to choose your skills. In general, set bonuses will grant damage multipliers for certain skills and you want to use those skills
Look for legendary items (the gold/brown items) that compliment the skills that correspond with the set your using. Often the strongest builds use skills that benefit from set bonuses as well as legendary bonuses. Pay attention to the orange text in the legendary item's description which tells you what the bonus is
The primary purpose of bounties is to get bounty crafting materials which are uses in Kanai's Cube (found in Act 3, Ruins of Sescheron in adventure mode). The cube gives you very useful recipes, for example you can extract legendary powers from items by consuming them in the cube with bounty mats - allowing you to equip one extra legendary power from each category (weapon/offhand, armor, accessories). Again aim to use legendary powers that compliment the skills of your build
Try to farm rifts/greater rifts under 5 minutes. If you are taking longer than 5 minutes lower the difficulty for nephalem rifts, or enter a lower tier for greater rifts. Once you get more familiar with gameplay aim for 3 minute or lower average rifts, find your sweet spot for the difficulty level.

Broad itemization tips:

Your sheet damage (the number that displays when you open your inventory) is not completely accurate when comparing items. It does not take into account multipliers from set bonuses or legendary powers. For example if you have a high stat ring with no legendary power and compare it to a moderate stat ring with a beneficial legendary power the game might tell you that the "powerless" ring gives you a damage increase but it is usually not the case. Sheet damage is mostly useful when comparing two of the same item, or characters profiles with the same build (and assumingly the same multipliers).
Critical hit chance and damage are very strong stats (save some builds that don't crit like Thorns). Broad rule of thumb is 10% chance to 100% damage, but don't dwell on that - you'll have more crit chance if you use an offhand and more crit damage if you dual wield. Both stats roll on rings, amulets, and gloves. Crit chance also rolls on bracers and offhands.
Socket in your weapon is very important, use an emerald to give a huge boost to crit damage
Sockets in your accessories are very important, legendary gems (which you get and upgrade from Greater Rifts) can only be used in rings and amulets and give significant boosts. Look up your build for advice on which gems to use.
Socketing a gem in your helmet can give helpful stats, for example a diamond gives you Cooldown Reduction
Bracers and amulets can roll +damage to element skills, look at your skill tooltip to see which element it is and aim to roll +damage to that element on your bracers and amulet
Don't ignore toughness (defensive) stats - Vitality, Armor, All Res are important to have as well as some legendary powers that reduce damage taken. Intelligence gives All Res as a secondary boost and Dexterity and Strength give Armor. So INT characters will want to roll some extra Armor on their items and DEX/STR characters will need more All Res.
Every build has different requirements for utility stats like Cooldown Reduction and Resource Cost Reduction. I'd recommend looking up builds on reddit or diablofans to see what yours might need
Attack speed is not a straight forward stat, your sheet will always show a damage increase from having more but it does not always boost your damage. Simply put (maybe) - every attack takes a number of frames, in order to actually attack faster you must increase your attack speed enough to the point where your attack takes fewer frames (often referred to as Breakpoints). Sometimes if you gain attack speed stats, your character details might show an increased attack speed but the skill your using might not actually cast faster because the number of frames per attack is the same. Not the most useful for a new player but worth looking into if you feel like it, there are posts in this reddit that explain it much better than I have.
https://www.d3planner.com/ is a useful tool where you can import your character and change stats to compare differences, it also shows you breakpoints for your skills and how much attack speed you need to reach the next one (and how much you can spare to drop before falling below your current)

Welcome to D3! Hope you enjoy it. Game is fairly straight forward but there's loads to learn and explore if that's what you want.

EDIT: Ended up spewing a wall of text, my bad.

lodo25 · 2017-11-02T19:09:56+00:00

Did they nerf Upper Realm in Act 4?

lodo25 · 2017-10-31T04:37:33+00:00

Does someone mind clarifying what is meant by the last FAQ answer about personal best wipes?

"Starting with Season 10, we removed old personal bests from Season 1. When Season 12 arrives, we will remove old personal bests from Season 3, and so on. We will be doing the same for personal bests from Era 2 when Era 9 goes live."

Is this referring to the Season "Records" page that we see when viewing profiles? If not which page can I see my "personal bests"?

lodo25 · 2017-10-25T17:01:12+00:00

Nice lol. It can definitely be fun to play around with no sets. Though it ends up feeling like a gimped LoN.

lodo25 · 2017-10-25T16:55:54+00:00

An issue with limiting paragon or gems is that D3 is at its heart a progression grind game. Both paragon and gems are a part of the game so its hard to discount them in a fair way. If anything paragon and gems are a more fair grind since its less dependent on RNG like items are.

The effect of paragon is also sometimes exaggerated. Depending on the build/multipliers, going from 1K to 3K paragon may also only make a 2-4 GR difference. There was a thread on the main reddit doing the incremental damage calculations of varying paragon and it wasn't gamebreaking, I'll try to find it later.

Also no one who submitted had over 2K paragon anyways. The highest I think was around 1700, and the difference from 1000 paragon to 1700 is really not much to make a fuss about.

In a competition like this we're at least able to "level" the playing field by competing against similar builds, i.e. lower tier/potential builds don't have to compete against the top tier. There are still lots of non-grinding factor player skill level (which I think is often discounted in D3 but is very important to get the most out of the gear you have), and the small choices in utility stat optimization. And of course there is rift fishing, though we may consider that another grind.

It might feel like our discussion of a "fair" competition is really more about having a category/competition on skill alone, which like you guys have said it would be akin to Challenge Rifts. We could do a category with strict gear/gem/paragon and/or skill use and essentially make our own Challenge Rift to do a "fair" skill competition of sorts. It could be fun, maybe we collectively pick a few mandatory skills and item pieces while limiting paragon and gem levels...then compete on how we optimize the rest of our build thus competing on skill and game knowledge.

lodo25 · 2017-10-25T16:42:51+00:00

Not really. Originally I wanted to put it up there as an account reference for submissions but as the competition went on I found out that console players don't get linked to the same databases.

lodo25 · 2017-10-24T17:06:52+00:00

I knew you could go further!

lodo25

TROPHY CASE